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Colin Gray, 54, the father of Georgia school shooting suspect Colt Gray, has been arrested, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced on Thursday.
“These charges stem from knowingly allowing his son Colt to possess a weapon,” GBI director Chris Hosey said during a press conference on Thursday evening.
The 54-year-old is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children, according to the GBI.
The charges are reportedly the second incident in U.S. history in which parents have been charged in connection with an alleged mass shooting committed by a minor, following charges against the parents of 2021 Oxford High School gunman Ethan Crumbley.
Colin’s son Colt, 14, has been charged with murder and will be tried as an adult over the shooting.
Colin Gray reportedly purchased Colt Gray a high-powered AR 15-style rifle as a holiday gift in 2023 that was later allegedly used in the Georgia shooting, which killed four people and hospitalized nine others.
The purchase came months after federal and local officials investigated online threats to commit a school shooting that allegedly traced back to Colt Gray.
In May of 2023, the FBI got a tip about online threats on the app Discord regarding a school shooting. It traced the threats to Georgia and forwarded information to the Jackson County Sheriffs’ Office, which interviewed the Gray family.
Colin Gray said he kept hunting guns in the house, but that Colt did not have unsupervised access to them. Colt, meanwhile, denied making the online threats.
“Colt expressed concern that someone is accusing him of threatening to shoot up a school, stating that he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” according to a police report obtained by The Independent.
Gray also told deputies that “he stopped using Discord because too many people kept hacking his account and he was afraid someone would use his information for nefarious purposes.”
During the interview with the Grays, a deputy openly mused about the stakes of the 2023 investigation, saying, “God forbid” if the online threats turned into an actual shooting, according to audio of the interview obtained by CNN.
Further investigation of Colt’s Discord page showed he made the account after he said he’d deleted it, and used a Russian username that “spells out the name Lanza, referring to Adam Lanza, who is the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooter in Newton, Conn.,” per the report.
Police notified local schools and no probable cause for an arrest was found at the time, according to the FBI.
During the time of the police interview, Gray’s parents were going through a divorce, in which the 14-year-old stayed with his father, while his mother took custody of two other children.
Colin Gray will be held in the Barrow County Detention Center, according to the county sheriff’s office.
There is no minimum age requirement to possess a rifle under federal and state firearms law in Georgia, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, but individuals must be 18 or older to buy one under both sets of rules.
The military-style AR rifle allegedly used in the shooting is a high-powered weapon that has been used in security threats across the country, including the recent assassination attempt against Donald Trump, and in an estimated 10 of the 17 deadliest mass shootings since 2012.
Rhian Lubin contributed reporting to this story.
